I Do As I Please
‘What on earth is going on?’
Seyul, who had been dragged into slavery without warning, was utterly baffled.
The viewers, unaware that the chat feed itself had been cut off, were just as thrown.
And amid everyone’s confusion, the game’s story began without a care for the awkward silence.
The continent was engulfed in war.
The monsters that had ruled the northern lands began their assault on humanity in earnest.
Before the might of such powerful monsters, humans fell helplessly, one after another.
A narration came pouring out of nowhere.
Seyul and his viewers reflexively snapped their attention to it.
The game Seyul had just launched was called God’s Warrior — a game in which warriors blessed by the gods stood against the monsters threatening mankind.
Ordinarily, a player began in the south, in the lands held by humans. But that was not the case on the brutal difficulty setting Seyul had chosen.
Starting in the north, in the territory ruled by the demonkin, meant his story unfolded differently as well.
You are one of the humans hunted by the monsters.
Your family, your friends — all of them were slaughtered by monsters.
The monsters that dragged you away took you as a slave and sold you off to an orc tribe of lesser fiends.
Now a slave to the orcs against your will, you have dragged out a wretched existence.
Can you escape this miserable life — and strike down the monsters?
The circumstances of his enslavement were laid bare.
Hearing it, Seyul nodded slowly. So that explains it.
‘Oh, so this is a game where you start out as a slave. The protagonist being a slave — pretty hardcore stuff.’
It was only brutal because of the difficulty setting, but Seyul, knowing nothing of that, simply assumed it had always been this way.
‘So those others were dragged here as slaves too, just like me.’
With the situation finally clear, he widened his field of observation. On either side of him stood a man and a woman in matching slave rags, their faces full of terror.
“Hrrgh!”
“We shall feast today, my brothers.”
Following their gazes, one found them fixed on a pack of creatures with green skin and pig-like faces. Orcs — about fifteen of them.
The grotesque orcs licked their lips as they looked the humans over. It was a truly ugly sight, but—
‘It’s been so long!’
For Seyul, who had been tormented by a homesickness gone haywire, even this was welcome. The bizarre spectacle of an orc, unseen for so long, was enough to move him to tears.
The viewers chided and complimented in the same breath: a face like that, wasted.
Was she some naturalized foreigner from Northern Europe or something?
Blindingly fair skin and long silver hair. They had wandered in expecting another God’s Warrior stream after so long, and had been startled at first by this strange creature — a beauty that hardly seemed human. Charmed by that otherworldly face, they kept watching even as their chat went ignored, yet somehow her behavior only grew stranger by the minute.
‘Everything about this is nostalgic enough to make me grin!’
Dreaming not even faintly that an unseen crowd of strangers was watching her, Seyul kept smirking away at the orcs.
While he did, the story marched on.
“Drag that one over here.”
One of the orcs spoke with a menacing gleam in its eye, and the others seized a slave from beside Seyul.
“S-stop! Stop, please!”
The slave screamed himself hoarse, but the orcs paid him no heed and hauled him out. Forcing down his thrashing body, they—
Thud!
—lopped off his head in a single stroke and let it drop to the ground.
“Heads taste like garbage. Toss it and take the body to the kitchen.”
“Got it.”
Having just casually killed a man, the orcs exchanged words with perfect nonchalance. Taste. Kitchen. There was only one thing those words could mean.
‘These bastards are planning to eat us!’
Seyul finally understood. The orcs hadn’t bought human slaves to work them — they’d bought them to eat them.
“Hoho, human flesh is truly delicious!”
“That one looks good for the next meal.”
“So plump and tender-looking, too.”
Smacking their lips, the orcs soon picked their next victim. And by some cruel twist of fate, it was Seyul.
‘What is happening?’
Watching the orcs close in on him, Seyul fell into confusion. Surely he was the protagonist here — was he really about to be reduced to a single course in an orc dinner? Was there some twist coming? Or was he supposed to do something, anything, himself?
Just as he was flailing for an answer—
Flash!
Suddenly, radiant figures made of pure light appeared around him, as if to shield him.
“...!”
“What in—?!”
Seyul was stunned. The orcs were stunned. Only the viewers kept their composure.
The viewers took it in stride; they had been reduced to waiting for exactly this. After all, the event about to unfold was the very reason this game was called God’s Warrior.
I am the God of Water!
I am the God of Fire!
I am the God of Wind, if you please~
I am the God of Earth, and so I am.
And I — I am the God of Light.
Five radiant figures introduced themselves in turn. These were the gods of the God’s Warrior world — the beings who granted power to its players.
Ordinary humans could hardly stand against monsters, but those blessed with divine power were another matter entirely. And so the player, as a warrior of the gods, stood at the center of the world’s attention — which made the gods NPCs guaranteed to appear.
On the brutal difficulty setting, they arrived like this: in the nick of a mortal crisis.
Alas!
We would gladly aid you and the rest of mankind — but the laws of the gods forbid it.
Instead, we shall take you as our proxy and lend you our strength.
Receive our power, follow our commands, and deliver humanity from the mire!
However — we cannot grant you everything. You must choose but one.
The gods delivered their lines in sequence, and a selection appeared at once.
◇ Receive the power of the God of Water
◇ Receive the power of the God of Fire
◇ Receive the power of the God of Wind
◇ Receive the power of the God of Earth
◇ Receive the power of the God of Light
One god out of five had to be chosen, and each bestowed a different power.
The viewers each held forth on which god’s blessing reigned supreme. Every one of them had played this game; they knew perfectly well that this choice was one of the most consequential acts in the entire run.
But then—
Seyul — who had bought this copy secondhand on someone else’s casual recommendation and had no idea about any of this — had spent several minutes in total silence, choosing nothing.
‘“We’ll give you power, so do as we say”?’
He frowned. He didn’t like it. Not one bit.
We mean well, so just do whatever we tell you. It was nothing more than game dialogue — and yet it was precisely the thing that made Seyul’s hackles rise. How many times had he fallen for that honeyed line, dressed up in some righteous cause?
Strong as he was, Seyul had always been hopelessly blind to common sense, to the ways of the world in that other world. And beings looking to exploit that had never been in short supply.
Each of them had approached him cloaked in some plausible justification, and he — fool that he was — had taken the bait, over and over. He had done plenty he would come to regret.
‘There was that time I got dragged into a war between nations and annihilated an enemy army wholesale.’
Granted, it happened midwar, and they were the enemy. But had they truly done something deserving of utter extermination at his hands? Why had the war even started — and was the opposing army really so irredeemably evil?
He had gone through with it because an allied noble had egged him on. Now, all he felt was remorse.
“No.”
And so Seyul shouted it — loud and clear, refusing the gods to their faces.
...
I’m sorry — what?
At this thoroughly unprecedented answer, the gods went silent, mouths agape. To the viewers, it looked exactly like someone crying, ‘Hey, then the game can’t even progress!’
The chat exploded. Everyone protested at full force — but the streamer could not see the chat window. It was nothing but a silent scream into the void.
O human.
The God of Water was the first to break the silence, speaking with his power flared open — visibly, unmistakably flustered.
Why do you refuse?
“I will not allow anyone else to decide my life for me.”
“All that, over so trifling a reason?”
The bewilderment in the God of Water’s voice deepened.
“We have no intention of controlling you, you know.”
“You certainly talk a good game — for beings who showed up at the precise moment I’d have no choice but to accept.”
“That’s— that’s not—”
The God of Water was left speechless. It existed for the game’s dramatic staging, after all — though this protest was being lodged at an NPC.
“Are you out of your MIND?!”
It was the God of Fire who roared in place of the dumbstruck God of Water.
“Can you not see the situation you’re in? You are a slave, one breath away from death! The only way out of this is to receive our power! And you would refuse — over some incomprehensible nonsense reason like THAT?!”
Every single word the God of Fire said was correct. Seyul didn’t even bother to argue.
‘I suppose I’m the fool here.’
He knew it, truly. He knew perfectly well that what he was doing was stupid.
This wasn’t reality — it was a game. Everything unfolding before him was nothing more than an in-game event. A beneficial event, one that handed the player power. Refusing it was simply an act of idiocy.
He knew it was idiotic. And yet he could not, would not, accept it.
Once before, he had been handed power by someone he couldn’t identify — and swung it about according to someone else’s will. Because of that, he had done things he would regret forever, and in his desperate longing for that other world, he had sought to make amends. That man could not commit the same sin again — not here, in this poor substitute for the world he missed!
“My fate is my own. Even if it leads straight to ruin, it must be mine, and mine alone! So get lost. I won’t say it twice.”
A declaration, cold and final. At that voice which permitted neither refusal nor negotiation, the gods flinched.
And then—
“Do as you please, then.”
“We shall see just how far that fate of yours carries you!”
The gods vanished, exactly as they had been told to — radiating the unmistakable air of sulking fury.
With the single most important event in the entire game broken, the viewers went off like a powder keg.
“Is this human insane?!”
“Refusing the power of the gods!”
Even the orcs — literal monsters — were dumbfounded.
Everyone had been plunged into chaos. But one person, and one person alone, smiled.
Because the events of the last few minutes had steeled his resolve.
‘That’s right. I don’t follow some script someone else wrote — not even inside a game.’
Decision made, Seyul no longer panicked. He fixed his gaze on every orc around him and roared:
“Come at me!”